Crashed And Burned

I lost as White last night against Egon Cardenas (ACF rating: 1256) playing a slightly offbeat variation of the Ruy Lopez.

Egon has certainly improved by leaps and bounds and kudos to him for a well fought game.

Despite having an advantage, I blew it away by breaking the cardinal rule of "Always bring all your pieces to the party".

Sigh.

Grade Matches Commences....

It's that time of the year again, and the NSW Grade Matches are starting in ernest.

I'll be playing for Norths in the U1600. Tonight, surprise, surprise, I'll be playing against the lads from Ryde Eastwood. Whatever happens, I'm looking forward to playing again. That's one of the thing about being members of 2 chess clubs. You end playing against the other club one of these days.

I doubt I'll win today but I'll try my best as I need to shake off the "rustiness" from being away from chess for too long.

A couple of updates.

The Manly Leagues Chess club is no more (no they've not decided to call themselves the Womanly Leagues Chess club either). Instead, they were forced to shift base camp to the suburb of Freshwater and is now called the Harbord Diggers Club.

US 2010 Championship Final: Open Mouth - Insert Pie

As the US2010 heads towards the final, 4 GMs, Hikaru Nakamura, Gata Kamsky, Alexander Onischuk and Yuri Schulman qualified.

Given that these are 4 extremely strong GMs (on their day), Hikaru Nakamura sought fit to mention, "Whoever beats Yuri (Schulman) will win the tournament. Me, Gata, and Onishuck will try to draw each other, and beat Yuri." - not subtly implying that Schulman, being the weakest (ratings wise) amongst the 4 will be a punching bag for the other 3.

Nakamura must be extremely pleased when he was drawn with Schulman having the White pieces.

Now he must have really regretted his words because he just got burnt to a crisp and came crashing down in 26 moves!

That was a nice miniature, Nakamura! Thanks for showing us how not to handle the French Defense. By the way, there's a pie waiting for you outside the playing room.

Tournament: U.S. Championship 2010
Round: 09
White: Nakamura, Hikaru
Black: Shulman, Yuri
Date: Mon May 24 2010
Result: 0-1
1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. e5 c5 5. a3 Bxc3+ 6. bxc3 Qa5 7. Bd2 Qa4 8. Nf3 Nc6 9. h4 cxd4 10. cxd4 Nge7 11. h5 Nxd4 12. Bd3 h6 13. Kf1 Nxf3 14. Qxf3 b6 15. Qg3 Ba6 16. Qxg7 Bxd3+ 17. cxd3 Rg8 18. Qxh6 Qd4 19. Re1 Qxd3+ 20. Kg1 Rc8 21. Bg5 Qf5 22. f4 Rc2 23. Rh2 Qd3 24. Qf6 Rxg5 25. Qxg5 Qd4+ 26. Kh1 Qe3 0-1

Anand's Secret Team

From the Chessbase interview with Anand, it turns out that aside from his own team of helpers, Anand also received help from:

a. World #1 rated player: Magnus Carlsen
b. 13th World Champion: Garry Kasparov
c. 14th World Champion: Vladimir Kramnik

and...........

d. Godfather Don Vito Corleone

And this photo is irrefutable proof. :)

(speaking of which, Topalov must really be a much "well loved" guy that he's got 2 ex-World Champions and #1 rated player working with his opponent - I can't even remember the last time that has happened)

Quiz: Do You Know Your World Chess Champions?

How well do you know your World Champions? :)

I've come up with a quiz. Now try to figure out who they are - answers can be found by highlighting between the brackets.

To make things easier, I'm limiting the Chess Champions to the 15 Classical World Champions (WCs). In other words, the answers to the quiz are amongst the following:

1 Wilhelm Steinitz 1886–1894
2 Emanuel Lasker 1894–1921
3 José Raúl Capablanca 1921–1927
4 Alexander Alekhine 1927–1935
5 Max Euwe 1935–1937
6 Mikhail Botvinnik 1948–1957
7 Vasily Smyslov 1957–1958
8 Mikhail Tal 1960–1961
9 Tigran Petrosian 1963–1969
10 Boris Spassky 1969–1972
11 Bobby Fischer 1972–1975
12 Anatoly Karpov 1975–1985
13 Garry Kasparov 1986–2000
14 Vladimir Kramnik 2000–2007
15 Viswanathan Anand 2007–present

Ready? Here we go (Googling the answer is for wimps):

Q1. When he was young, this WC's home chess set had a missing white bishop so he used a toy lead soldier in its place on the f1 square instead. He often blundered this toy soldier away as well in his early games.
A1. [Mikhail Botvinnik (Source: Achieving the Aim - Mikhail Botvinnik)]

Q2. This WC once exclaimed,"So great is the conviction nowadays in the advantage of the 2 Bishops (over 2 Knights)". He proceeded to prove his doubters wrong with a win using 2 Knights over 2 Bishops over another WC.
A2. [Vasily Smyslov - His defeated opponent was Max Euwe (Source: My Best Games of Chess 1935-1957 - Vassily Smyslov) ]

Q3. The famous "double bishop" sacrifice was often attributed to this WC but surprisingly, this sacrifice was actually played years before he did it.
A3. [Emanuel Lasker (Source: Chessgames.com - the famous game was Lasker-Bauer, Amsterdam 1889)]

Q4. This WC proposed this chess variant (using a 10x8 board) while he was world champion.
A4. [José Raúl Capablanca (Source: Wikipedia - José Raúl Capablanca)]

Q5. This then 18 year old WC created a huge stir when he beat his then more famous GM opponent in classical time controls using only 15 minutes of his own time.
A5. [Viswanathan Anand (Source: Daniel King - How Good Is Your Chess). He beat Soviet GM Gennady Kuzmin in Frunze 1987 (http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1017948).]

Q6. This World Champion had a favorite souvenir made by one of his fans - it was a chess knight made out of onyx and in the eye of the knight, a miniature chess board and on it, the World Champion's 5th game position in his WC match win.
A6. [Tigran Petrosian (Source: Vik Vasiliev - Tigran Petrosian - His Life And Games)]